 2008-10-12 - Pointless
I have a lot of respect for George Will and so I was really looking forward to OMA. What a disappointment. It's nothing more than a collection of short commentaries and profiles (some seem like obituaries): a disjointed hodge-podge lacking in overall direction or substance. What an unbelievably pointless book.
Very sad...
Not recommended.
 2008-09-26 - Not What You Might Imagine
The simple narrative on George Will is that he's conservative. That of course is either praise or criticism. But I found this book to be surprisingly apolitical. I actually found it to be both warm and engaging in how it celebrates fundamental human things. You even find joy and, dare I say, quiet inspiration in this book. The biggest inspiration? Mr. Will's observations come from a personal place. They seem not part of the daily cartoon-ish dialogues of left versus right, or good versus evil. Instead they are, whether agreeable to ones inclinations or not, those of an objective observer making a reasoned case. I finished this book and realized I'd gained perspective not ideology. And that was refreshing. And boy-oh-boy he writes well ...
2008-08-28 - Devils in Will's Details (adapted from his Aug 28, 2008 column)
When George Will feeds rhetorical bibble-di-babble to the multitudes watching him on TV every Sunday morning, he delivers a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to conservatives who consider themselves well-read. One more monotonous, wordy, and incomprehensible complaint about liberalism, one naggy enough to please conservatives or even his fellow "pundits" will confirm Pascal's point that "continuous eloquence wearies." That is so because it is not really eloquent. If it is continuous over a period of nearly forty years, it is necessarily formulaic and bo-ring, general enough for any time and place, hence truly apposite for none. And when I use the word apposite, whatever point I was trying to make is likely apposite of nothing. And by apposite, I mean appropos or appropriate, but I prefer apposite. Don't ask me why.
If Socrates had engaged in an interminable career as a conservative political yakkety-yakker, yakking at us every day about the annoying habits of liberalistic liberals on This Week, Newsweek, The Washington Post and in a never-ending stream of redundant books of his previously published essays in this media-drenched age, perhaps he, too, would have come to seem banal. But the fact that Will is not capable of producing a single sentence which does not require the listener or reader to reach for a thesaurus may have something to do with the fact that when he descends from the ether to practicalities, he reprises a conservative commentator's most apposite nostrums.
Will waxes indignant about Obama's much lauded oratorical skills. But Will's own rhetorical extravagances are inversely proportional to his details, as when he randomly leaps from discussing the vileness of ebonics to Lord Ismay describing NATO in 1949 as being created to "keep Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out."
As the Nobel Literature Award announcement approaches, George Will must be wondering: If that did not do it, what will? The antecedent of the pronoun "that" is his 1997 baseball bore-fest, Men At Work. The antecedent of the pronoun "it" is assuage anxieties about his ability to produce anything memorable in his 40 years of writing and babbling.
 2008-08-03 - enjoyable
This is an interesting book by Will that covers everything from baseball to politics to race relations. It is a collection of short essays written over the last few years. While Will is inarguably a leading thinker within the conservative movement, his book does not look fondly upon the Bush 43 administration.
And in case you thought George Will was devoid of a sense of humor, he writes, "But, then, serendipity has often attended the Fourth of July. That day is the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), arguable the father of American literature. And of Stephen Foster (1826), arguably the father of American music. And - save the most luminous for last - the sainted Calvin Coolidge (1872), who oversaw a 45 percent increase in American's production of ice cream". (p. 235)
2008-07-19 - Another Great Collection of Writings from Will
This is the eighth collection of George Will's columns and other writings. The book is a great series of reflections on American life from 2002 to 2008.
"One Man's America" is a treasure trove of columns on historical figures, politics, history, the culture, sports (especially Will's beloved baseball), education, and science. He has a couple of great columns on the recently departed William F. Buckley, and his year-end columns and his columns about books are especially enjoyable.
Will is a national treasure. He is so learned, and has a staggering amount of background knowledge, that he manages to drop numerous unfamiliar facts about familiar people and incidents into his columns, which means that the columns must surely be educational for even the most well-informed D.C. insider. You may not agree with him on every issue, but to read George Will is not to spend time--it is to invest time.
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